‘The Crown’ Season 5 Debuts as Number 1 on Netflix’s Weekly Top 10

“The Crown” remains Netflix royalty. The fifth season of Peter Morgan’s Queen Elizabeth II biopic series has debuted at the top of the streamer’s Top 10 English language chart, for the November 7 through 13 viewing window.

According to figures provided by Netflix, the fifth season of the series has been watched for 107.39 million hours since its premiere on November 9. Previously, it was reported that the show was watched by over 1.1 million viewers in the United Kingdom on its launch day. Even more impressively, that figure from Overnights.tv only counts people who watched the show via TV, meaning those who watched via a laptop, tablet or cell phone weren’t included in the figure.

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Since it first premiered in 2016, “The Crown” has been a consistently popular title for Netflix. While Netflix’s selective reporting makes it hard to compare the viewership from season to season, the last installment, Season 4 in 2020, performed well on the Nielsen Streaming Top 10, reaching No. 5 with 807 million minutes viewed on its first week (it premiered the very last day of the window) before reaching No. 1 with 3.4 billion minutes the following week. Note though that the Nielsen charts count the seasons of shows together, while Netflix’s Top 10 counts each season as separate entries.

Created by Morgan, “The Crown” retells the history of the late Queen Elizabeth’s entire reign, starting from her ascension to the throne in 1947. Every two seasons changes the cast of the program to reflect the aging of the Windsors; Season 5, which focused heavily on the divorce of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, starred Imelda Staunton as the Queen, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, Jonny Lee Miller as Prime Minister John Major, Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker Bowles, Marcia Warren as the Queen Mother, and Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki as Charles and Diana.

Season 5 is the first season of the Emmy-winning drama to debut following Elizabeth’s death this September, as well as Philip’s death last year. In the wake of her passing, the show paused production of its sixth season out of respect, but faced some preemptive criticism from the Royal family’s supporters, most prominently Judi Dench, who accused it of being hurtful towards the royal family. Ultimately, the controversy seems to have only helped the season find some new eyeballs.

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